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“It gets to seem as if way back in the Garden of Eden after the Fall, Adam and Eve had begged the Lord to forgive them and He, in his boundless exasperation had said, ‘All right, then. Stay. Stay in the Garden. Get civilized. Procreate. Muck it up.’ And they did.”  Diane Arbus 

surfacing from mother-sea, we came ~
we came shape-shifting and sighing,
living before the prescient moon and
under the life-giving sun, we climbed
mountains and marched into valleys

short-lived, we camped by the riverside,
we slept in caves, we cleared the forest,
built cities that domesticated us

we became sophisticated, forgot our
rootedness in the archives of heaven,
our shared destiny with the earth, we
forsook our history and the stars,
invented math, maps and compasses,
governments, borders and ownership

we built great ships to sail the oceans,
to drum across the sky and away to outer
realms and other planets, we mislaid our
true stories and, in ignorance suckled
on prefabricated values, these streamed
from cold fires that stoked insecurities ~
we confused wants and needs, hungered
for the sake of our own stupidity
and someone else’s greed

© 2017, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

Perhaps you see our evolving in a more positive frame than Diane Arbus and I suggest here. Then again, maybe not.  Tell us about it in a poem or poems.

Share your poem/s on theme or a link to it/them in the comments section below.

All poems on theme will be published next Tuesday. Please do NOT email your poem to me or leave it on Facebook. If you do it’s likely I’ll miss it or not see it in time.

IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com in order to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These will be partnered with your poem/s on first publication.

PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.  

Deadline:  Monday, August 20 at 8 p.m. Pacific.

Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro.  It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, sharing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning nonjudgemental place to connect.

ABOUT

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers.

My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman.

38 Comments

  4. ON THE CUSP

    A yacht sails in summer, northwards to the Pole.
    A slush of gelatinous grey greets its bow
    as it makes its ambivalent journey.
    On Admiralty charts a woman replaces islands,
    sketches new sandbars, reefs marked with buoys,
    while their people are moving into legend.

    Lines of footprints cover deserts; jackals, bones,
    eyeballs. Driven from shelter to shelter, children
    ailing and confused, half-filled ditches,
    refuse tips: where will the unborn live as
    their families take flight?

    A gig
    was once a party, an impromptu concert
    in a corner pub, a mingle of music, sweat
    and beers.A world of miasma now,
    of beck and call for paupers’ pay, waiting
    to be plucked like a lobster from a tank.

    Yes, yes, the richest should have more,
    more tax-breaks crammed into their maw
    until they vomit gold, excrete jewels and mansions,
    super yachts and private jets, smearing
    earth and airwaves
    with their self-obsessed banalities.
    In shadowed lobbies, their hired hands work
    on dispossession, the cutting of common bonds,
    democracy just one more acquisition.

    Anthropocene.
    Swallowing the future
    Is the corporate plan.

    We know enough
    To stop and turn and heal
    Our poisoned planet.
    Are we enough
    To gather now together?

    FALSE LIGHT

    The moon scatters the light it has stolen
    out of vanity, cycling round us in
    its futile effulgence. Earthworms harvest
    the autumn’s leaves, enriching the crust, thin
    below the dwindling branches where we sit
    and watch the axes hew the trunk and slash.

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  5. Transformation

    Systems call out for evolution,
    for complexity, development, transformation,
    a whole new suit
    of cells, mutation of molecules
    and microbes replacing themselves
    at rapid rates, a constant reminder
    that so much of myself
    is not myself, but a cocktail party
    of bacteria and viruses, which
    sounds bad, very noisy gut,
    but so efficient; they communicate,
    even between different sorts.
    Their differences do not
    paralyze them. This human
    language I am so proud of,
    is clunky next to what happens,
    the communication of organisms
    and systems, inside me.
    So many misunderstandings out here
    among humans, while inside us,
    networks are constantly lit up,
    exchanging essential info, proteins
    and amino acids, adjusting
    and altering, individual evolutions,
    on a daily basis, sometimes hourly.
    I should listen more, learn something.
    But mostly that’s just not how I roll.

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  6. A small second:

    I Can Do It Myself

    said the 2 year old to his mommy
    and tripped on the untied shoelaces
    falling to the ground and waited
    for his mommy to pick him up,
    dust him off, and set him right
    so he could once again insist,
    “I can do it myself!”

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    3. I like the succinctness of this poem and how you have been able to express so much about one of the most important moments of life. The title and the last verse are perfect.

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  7. Always a beautiful elegant model for us, Jamie.
    Mine, a little less so:

    Evidence Against Evolution

    women dragged by the hair into the dank rock caverns of the cavemen

    women uncounted in records of attendance when miracles performed

    women operated on to remove bits of brain believed
    to create trouble for men

    women unacceptable as witnesses in man’s court

    women condemned to death by superstitious men

    But now
    with more education, enlightenment, progress

    women drugged, raped, silenced
    – without ever being victims of hate crimes

    women questioned and doubted in courts and media
    – dismissed by sound bite hash tags and tweets

    women humiliated for combining emotional expression
    and intelligent thought

    – the 1% used as proof glass ceiling is gone, when it is
    only windexed

    women condemned to death by superstitious men
    – for shedding their own blood rather than another’s

    Evolution?

    Just finer tuned delusion.

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  9. Evolving Door

    In goes a lungfish
    And out comes an outcome.
    Pop go the measles
    And wipe out a tribe.

    Lenny heard Zug Nicht
    And wandered about some.
    Thundering Diesels
    Suggest we imbibe.

    In goes a notion
    And out comes an essay.
    Guidelines and labels
    Give sojourning ease.

    Spit in the ocean
    And spite minks and sables.
    Laissez-faire less, eh.
    And conquer displease.

    Tuppence for pleasantries;
    Cheese-whizzed parcheesi
    Challenges wellsprung
    Make Autumn to mold.

    If you’re uneasy,
    Dear Reader, nor well hung,
    Take ye some evolvement
    Out doorways to freedom
    And bed and break strictures
    To push through the membrane;
    Grow pairs not of testes
    But peregrine wings.

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  10. .head above water, a swimmers perspective.

    Metaphorically, i have spent much of my life, keeping my head above water.

    Dealing with life facts and disappointments, not forgetting the quiet times to help the work along

    I lived on the coast, played by the sea

    As a child, I floated gently until all became spongey. Now I swim head above water, up and down obsessively counting, hoping all will come clear..

    Friends in water talk more, baring much, reflecting their clothing

    I am drawn to water, my work reflective. Writing, swimming, painting, drawing.

    I collect cuttings of people in water.

    “a diary, a personal relationship with the landscape.

    “Shoreline would be more an exploration of the concept….shorelines more related to actual examples…..how about that?

    Shoreline…..an ever-changing interface……between 2 media…..2
    worlds…..can be crossed in both directions, but only temporarily?……but
    aren’t we only here because something had the courage to cross
    permanently…..something emerging from the sea is such a powerful
    image….turtles, ursula andress in dr. no, monsters from the deep…..and
    why do we find it such an attractive place to be
    xx salty”

    sbm

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    1. Beautifully crafted with the water element as a basis. Actually, and according to psychology, water is related to our emotions and feelings,which is exactly what you have done here so well done.

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  11. .the query.

    winding wool is mindless

    she said, well maybe madam,

    yet look at the lovely machine,

    all red and cream plastic, that

    winds in a way we cannot do

    by hand.

    look at my work which evolves

    while working this and thinking.

    i folded her goods tidily, packed in a

    nice paper bag, said nothing

    except mere politeness and niceties.

    then got on with winding.

    mindfully.

    sbm.

    Liked by 4 people

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  12. Thanks Jamie……first response

    . day six .

    your eyes last night were wide, your body

    smaller without the sleep, all that

    worry and distress.

    it will not end , just change and evolve.

    sometimes it takes years, and then it is

    never the same.

    any more.

    maybe you must go back to sleep

    a while.

    i will keep reading, tell you all

    when you wake

    #bear.

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  13. Hi Jamie,

    Here’s my second response:

    To…

    upright, you can see further,
    and in the sand prints
    of your own feet, and others,
    smaller, differently shaped,

    Now you would say these are scratches
    on pages, distinct signs in a forest,
    or plain, each holds itself a tell, a map,
    of sense and season and root.

    smooth your hand over gnarled
    stick of then that supports your weight
    when you stride forward to follow
    the beckoning of others tracks,

    inhale the freshness from the waves,
    that tastes salty to your tongue,
    the sweetness from the inland trees,
    and smaller flimsy coloured leaves,

    and a bitterness, a stink gets stronger,
    as you trace the tracks other
    than your own go inland, broken
    leaves. How many feet does it have?

    Now accused of techno anomie
    because you refuse others access to your senses,
    your avatar still in the forest, on the plain,
    walks without aid beside the everwaves .

    (From “The Spermbot Blues”, OpPRESS, 2017)

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  14. Hi Jamie,

    Here’s my first response:

    From…

    evercrash of waves put me
    on the untouched shore

    I crawl because i don’t know
    how to walk this grain.
    Now I would say tumbled waves

    are fletched like an arrow constantly
    turned to ensure its flight straight
    and unencumbered by splinters.

    Later I staunch blood, remember
    the now of the sun then, too bright,
    too warm in this comfort blanket.

    Now I would say I was slippery
    as bladderwrack or between thighs
    of a woman heated by want,

    and hungry but not for food.
    I leave it to the ocean
    behind me that flickers

    with sounds some of which
    i understand but the waters
    less and less drag me back,

    push me to drygrain land.
    I must find leafshelter
    in the arms of mothered soil,

    in the limbs of the trees,
    beneath the coddling leaves,
    a fallen tree stump helps

    me stand. I break a branch
    test it does not break with my weight.
    I stand free of the stump. Upright.

    Now I would say my skin
    lost its sheen, became sticky
    as the green blood of plants
    that trap food with their leaves.

    (from “The Spermbot Blues”, OpPRESS, 2017)

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Thank you!